Will Mayer of Cold Holdings breaks down five pillars of cult brand building with Polymarket and Blueprint as case studies

Speaker 2: news, social media, like, that's been the advantage there potentially. And then Cursor will be more data code driven and there'll actually be sort of a bifurcation in the models? Or will we just see a consolidation where both models wind up offering like basically the same spiky frontier as every other model? Anyway, excited to dig into that. Always love a new model launch. But we have our next guest in the waiting room. We have Will Mayer from Cult Holdings. Welcome to the show. How are doing, Will? I'm doing well. How are you, guys? Thank you so much for taking the time. Great to have on the show. Great to have you on the show. What what do what do we got in the background here? Oh, yeah. Is that real?

Speaker 8: That is real. Yeah. That's like various artifacts from the past. So Very cool.

Speaker 2: Webby Awards, I I think. The spring isn't that a Webby Award? That is a that is Webby Award. Congratulations. Thanks, Give us a little background. Give us a little bit of the journey. Introduce yourself for those who are watching who might not be familiar with your work. Yeah. Of course. I am Will Mayer. I'm the co founder and high priest at Cold Holdings. Mhmm. Background

Speaker 8: came from making skateboard films at a young age when I was, like, 14 for companies like Vans. Became deeply obsessed with brands and what they represented. Yeah. Moved from there into advertising, working with brands like Nike and Netflix, and then started working more and more with startups, incubating companies, and fell in love with cults and religions and believe that many of the best brands are some form of a religion. I remember

Speaker 2: remember early in Silicon Valley, was working on a company and people were saying like, oh, like, you don't want your product to have a cult like following. And I was looking at Cult of Mac, like the the website that tracks Mac. They they they refer to it as a cult. It's a great way to think about things. Obviously, some negative case against not wanting a cult? Oh, just that, like, you know, cults are bad. They often lead to, like, terrible outcomes in the literal sense. And also, you probably don't want, like, psychos following you. You want just like normal customers in reality. And that's what Apple wound up getting. They got a huge amount of just normal consumers, but they do have a cult like fan base. Yeah. They needed they needed the cult to get them through to the truly hit consumer product. Yeah.

Speaker 8: I I mean, before the, like, nineteen seventies, the word cult was actually neutral. It just meant a new fringe group. There was a period in, like, the sixties and seventies people referred to as the fourth great awakening. It's like a huge boom in in spirituality. Things like, Aum Shimmerichio, Children of God, but also brands like Blue Ribbon Sports, which became Nike or Apple Yeah. Yeah. From Jobs. In that period, the word cult went from being a neutral word to a negative, and conservatives started to use it to demarcate and delegitimize new movements. So today, sociologists mostly refer to cults as NRMs or new religious movements. Okay. Got it. Interesting. Yeah. But you're you're you're reclaiming it. You're taking it back.

Speaker 2: Talk to us about I mean, you have a couple different a couple different things going on in your world, but I'm interested particularly in in advertising video production. Like, what does it look like to work with you? How long are you on a particular project? The Polymarket ad went very viral. And I'm wondering, like, what does that process look like from start to finish?

Speaker 8: It really depends on the type of folks we work with. With Polymarket, we've been working with them since January Mhmm. In, like, a bunch of different capacities. Mhmm. The team and I have been working on strategy, a bunch of the brand work, and out of home stuff. Okay. That campaign came together in an insane timeline and was driven a lot in partnership with their internal team. Sure. I got a call, like, three weeks before the World Cup. And if you guys know, like, people now are working on Super Bowl ads. Yep. It's like a six month process. Normally, that whole thing from, like, concept to production to post to being online

Speaker 1: and routed for TV was, like, three, three and a half weeks. Wow. So it was insane. Yeah. What how did you process all the different reactions? I I think I saw the Reuben ad, like, while watching UFC. I watched it too. And I was like, woah, Rick Rubin in a prediction market ad. Yeah. The ad was obviously very cool. A lot of people were surprised by that. I brought it up to you. You were like, Rick Rubin came out of the rap game. Why is it surprising that he would do like a Prediction market? Prediction market. UFC? So so, yeah. I feel like it was very yeah, very mixed reactions to it. You know, not not on the creative. I think that was universally, like, creative was awesome. How did you process people's reaction to it?

Speaker 8: I mean, I feel like a lot of the best campaigns are pretty controversial. I mean, in our time with Equinox, we, like, banned membership sales on January 1, and that became, like, the most heated moment that business has ever had, but also the most successful campaign in history for them. So I think with with someone like Rick, what was great is there's nobody that represents questions better than him for those who feel like either the creative actor Oh, yeah. Anything else. So he felt like a great fit. Yeah.

Speaker 1: I've been feeling over you know, we're we're sort of at, like, peak marketing content. And yet, like, it feels like advertising has never been in a worse place. I don't know if you feel the same way. The the the campaign with Polymarket is like, it is a campaign. It feels like the the the craft of of advertising and that's why I think it broke through as much as, like, again, the actual creative was good. Do you feel the same way? Do you have launch video fatigue? It used to be, like, you know, maybe a company would come out with a video, but they were really just hoping for, like, a TechCrunch article. Now it's, like, well, we're definitely doing a video and it'll look exactly the same as every other video. And then, yeah, maybe we get a TechCrunch article, but it feels like people are trying to create their own artifacts.

Speaker 8: I mean, dude, I don't wanna I don't wanna point it back at you, but you guys created like the OG launch video, I feel like. I remember that was my first experience at TBPN was, like, you guys on a helicopter or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

Speaker 1: I I'd say No. And and we you you you'll appreciate. We had 20 other videos planned, and then

Speaker 2: it it just started this sort of snowball where everyone was launching videos. And we were like, this is no longer a good way to actually break through and get attention. So we just switched to gratitude. We we literally had the whole production team here, like, geared up for, like, weekly video shoots with ideas and different songs that we 're gonna play on, and then it just got so tired. Saturated. We're like, ah, okay. Let's not do that. Yeah. Should have we should have made 10. We should have made them one day at a time or something like that. But I don't know. What yeah. What what do you think about, like, the the the the the oversaturation of things, like how fast the Internet moves, when you wanna jump on something, when you wanna bring back something from the archive that hasn't been touched in years?

Speaker 8: It's tricky, man. I mean, again, like, not to throw it back to the seventies again, but the average American, I think, then saw, like, 500 ads a day, and now it's more than 5,000. And who knows what it'll be in, like, a few years from now. Wow. I we get hit up, like, every day for, like, countless launch videos. Sure. I'm not sure how long the trend's gonna last. I think just, like, it's cliche to say, but, like, taste and a contrarian point of view will cut through. The approach I would give to people to try is I think the poly market work resonated because we took somebody who would the whole team, like, from creatives on in internally there to the photographer to the talent, normally wouldn't be a part of a prediction market campaign. Mhmm. When you think of, like, Equinox, every photographer we ever hired for Equinox had never shot fitness before. Oh. They only shot fashion. All of our design team came from museums that we would poach. I think, like, hiring people out of category Yeah. You have enough subject matter experts in the business, so bring in people who don't know the category and can bring new things to it. Yeah. When you have a campaign that hits,

Speaker 1: where do you do you think the value is primarily coming from a great idea or the execution?

Speaker 8: I think a lot it's hard to The

Speaker 1: the the great the great idea is, like, let's make it impossible to sign up for a membership on January 1. Right? Like, that's the idea and that's what sticks with people. I don't even remember, like, a lot of the visuals, but to me that that's what made it a great campaign.

Speaker 8: Yeah. I think that we spent less than 1% of what we would normally spend on a January campaign that year for what we launched, which we don't speak January. It was just black and white text, which is why you don't remember it. But, like, brand actions, I think, cut through more than anything now. Yeah. Especially with, like, I feel like AI is gonna democratize creativity and skill Yeah. To so many people. That there'll be such an abundance of beautiful visuals over the next few years that, like, the concept and what the company actually does will probably be the most important thing. Interesting. What action are you willing to take? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actions speak louder than words and maybe slop as well.

Speaker 2: How how do you how is working with Brian Johnson different? Because it feels like, Polymarket, it's sort of like a standard playbook. You have a celebrity. You have a video. It's going in the World Cup. It's like it's like standard inventory. Obviously, executed very well. But, with Brian Johnson, it's like this massive owned media influencer driven individual. He's huge on Twitter. It it just feels like a different company. How did you approach that? What'd you wind up working with him on?

Speaker 8: It's massive. Him and Kate hit us up, like, probably late twenty twenty four, early twenty five because they heard we were focused on, like, building religions. Yeah. And the brief was basically, build a build a religion for Don't Die. That makes sense. So we spent a lot of last year. We had to, like, to basically collaborate with them on what the doctrine of Don't Die became. Yeah. A lot of the rituals around it. There's, like, a I don't know, like, five core tenants of, like, how to build a cult brand. And I think Brian's, like, done all of those completely naturally authentically on his own. Do you know Were you were you responsible for getting him on the cigarette

Speaker 1: box? You know about this?

Speaker 2: I was not responsible for that. In in France, they have pictures of, I think cancer patients on the on the boxes of cigarettes and one of them looks exactly like Brian Johnson. Pulling this up. It's very funny. Yeah. We can share it with you and you can see. I I'm interested to know the the the five key, tenants of building a cult brand. But first, we'll show you the image of the Brian Johnson on the cigarette box. Can we zoom in there? It looks just like him to me. This one This would have been good guerrilla marketing. Yeah. You should have claimed credit. Yeah. I'm honestly surprised it's not, but yeah. Respect. But well, yeah. Walk us through the five tenants. How do they apply to Blueprint and beyond?

Speaker 8: Yeah. I think it it comes down to, like, five core things. The first being doctrine. So having, like, identity before features Okay. Which is, like, what is the sacred text that everybody abides by? Most brands have a tagline, but what can actually be, like, truly enforced and felt by the community. Brian's done this incredibly well. Think of things like most, religions have commandments or tenets. Mhmm. Brands have, like, think different or Mhmm. Just do it. Mhmm. You have longer forms of doctrine, like the Technological Republic by Alex Karp Yeah. Or, like, zero to one. Brian used to write under the moniker zero all the time, so he's been primed for that. The second is ritual, which, like, again, Brian through the dinner series for Don't Die Dinners did such a beautiful job at. You guys have a ritual here every day, five days a week. Yeah. But, like, what are the initiations into your brand or into your community? Yeah. And it's basically forming, like, a ritual that becomes a habit that becomes identity over time. Like, you buy a pair of shoes, you join a run club, you are a runner. The third one is symbols and language. So, like, how can you take elements to create in groups versus out groups? What are the key features that signal people who are insiders versus outsiders to your brand? CrossFit has, like, it's not a workout, it's the WOD. With Equinox, we never said gyms, we would say clubs. Yeah. So elements like that are super important. The Catholic church used stained glass windows to educate an overwhelmingly illiterate population in the twelfth century to indoctrinate them into the church. Interesting. That's like another form of symbols for that. The fourth is a charismatic leader, which again, you have in Brian, you have in folks like Palmer Lucky Yeah. Where you almost icon yourself. Mhmm. So like Palmer, goatee, Hawaiian shirts, flip flops, things like that are so incredibly important. And then the fifth one is an enemy. I think, like, every brand needs a nemesis. It a lot of people use, like, competitors. Apple started as IBM Yeah. With the, like, 1984 campaign. Yeah. But over time, it evolved to the concept of conformity. Because when you get bigger than your competition, that enemy loses power. But if it's, like, an overwhelming thought that can never truly be defeated, the enemy always keeps power. If you were doing a brand for the dog breed golden retriever and you needed to figure out an enemy for the golden retriever,

Speaker 1: what what would let's let's workshop some. The tennis ball. No. It's not the tennis ball. It's not the tennis ball. Because that's your friend. That's the thing that you wanna that's the thing that you wanna that you're desperately trying to find and get. It's hunger. I don't know. What do think? It could be hunger. For for my Australian Shepherd, it's like every single loud car, so I would say, like, the opposite of peace. And in defining your enemy, you define yourself. Yeah. So, like, I'd be interested who are who's your enemy? Who's, like, the nemesis of TPPN right now? Oh. We we've actually mean, we've mapped this all out. We actually did this experience. And, yeah, I mean, it was, geopolitical near peer rivals, who you can guess.

Speaker 2: And then we had a bunch of, like, more satirical ones like

Speaker 1: Like our allies. People who block data centers. Like, we we love data centers, that whole thing. I mean, yeah. That that was that was early on. We would do things more like who were who were our allies. Like, if someone would mention private equity, we would just like, you know, clap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was like no one ever is like standing up for private equity. Short sellers. We hate short sellers. That type of thing, you know. Of course. Yeah. The yeah. We have a sheet, the terms and memes. How do you how do you think about scaling what you're doing, you know, in a in a craft business? It's it's exceeding it's been done. Scale's been done in in in the creative field with with with agencies, but oftentimes, it's at odds with great work. But how do you think about it?

Speaker 8: I think the the point of view, the way we work is different than most agencies. Like, I I have no desire to scale the agency much larger than it is today. The way in which we work was, like, you can either grow an agency really large, try to sell for a pretty shit multiple down the road, or what we started doing, like, five years ago was incubating startups. So only a third of our clients pay us in cash. The other two thirds pay us in some form of equity. We helped create a credit card company that is called Built Rewards, which you might have heard of. Yeah. Skye Uncle Jane. And I've done a bunch of stuff like that. So we're working on a ton of those with firms like Index and other venture firms. I found I found our actual

Speaker 2: our actual list of enemies. Did you? HVAC repairman. I don't know why they're on there. DJI drones, TikTok, Xi Jinping, under monetized podcasts, podcasts that don't have enough advertising. Which we solved. Leaf blowers.

Speaker 1: Yep. Fantasy football. Why did we put that on there? What's wrong with fantasy football? This is from the original printout of Yeah. The TPN. So we we when we were doing the show early on, we would have these bits. Yeah. And if we had a good bit, we would write it down and we would have the sheet that we would update, I would just keep it here. And it would just remind me of, like, the kind of the core tenants as we were establishing the In in in allies, we had,

Speaker 2: job creators and bubbles. Very good. Very good. Yeah. Was a lot it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Good exercise for any brand. But, of course, everyone should call you first because you're clearly much better than most people. But fantastic progress. Thank you so much for coming on the show, breaking down for us. Jordy, anything else? Yeah. Yeah. Next time you're next time one of your Yeah. Founders is coming on

Speaker 1: flag it to us. Yeah. Be great. Excited to meet them. Yeah. We'll talk to them soon. Awesome. Sounds good. Have a good one, guys. Cheers. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

Speaker 2: Ugh. The old term sheet, the size gong timeline, some personnel news. We haven't done one of those in a while. We don't really do the trade deals. The the the trading cards really took the place of the trade deals. But speaking of advertising, I want to watch this SK Hynix advertisement that Tyler dug up. Let's play this because I want your reaction, Jordy. To It's true. Is an ad for SK Hynix? Okay. So we're also being exported.

Speaker 1: Exported. Exported.

Speaker 2: The time went by. He's dressed up as the chip, as the HPM? He's dressed up as the memory. Can't you just be cool? How have you been doing? Why is he frozen? Some prop comedy. I like it.